


five plus one plus one plus one

by scratchienails



Series: Scratchie's old KNB fics [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Kuroko Tetsuya, Kagami swears like a kid from LA, Kuroko went to Fukuda Sōgō, M/M, Oblivious Kagami Taiga, Questionably experimental writing style, Teikou Era, backstory comes in chapter 2, he's more misguided than anything else, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 08:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20561348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scratchienails/pseuds/scratchienails
Summary: What if Kagami had to knock sense into not five miracles, but six?Fukuda Sōgō!Kuroko AU





	five plus one plus one plus one

* * *

Taiga likes to practice on a local street court in the evenings. It’s better than lazing around his empty apartment, and the extra practice is nice. There’s rarely ever anyone else there, except when there is.

It’s always the same kid, a tiny guy that’s hard to notice and keep track of, despite having baby blue hair and an infuriating personality.

Their first meeting, Taiga thinks, was when he was just back and adjusting to middle school. He was aggravated and disappointed all the time, feeling out of place and defensive, and his school’s basketball team didn’t help. It was a sparse team, only a handful of guys, all who barely tried and seemed lifeless on the court.

None of them expected to win, for some reason, and Taiga couldn’t play like that.

So he worked off his frustration at night, and that’s how he first encounters the kid, wearing a white school uniform and loitering on the court.

The kid’s eyes remind him a lot of those of his not-teammates, and he finds himself telling the kid to not give up, like they did.

He doesn’t know if the kid takes his advice, but they somehow keep running into each other after that.

* * *

Taiga thinks he first meets one of the stupid miracle players in his first practice game of high school.

And he gets his already beat ass handed to him, after working said ass off to get the annoying ass coach to even play the damn guy. Kise Ryouta is nothing like the other players on the court: he’s fast, he’s vicious, and has reflexes a guy only two years into the game has no place having. His skills are damn good, and that’s not even getting into his infuriating copycat abilities. Everything Taiga tries over the course of the practice match gets turned right back on him, and dammit, Kise made half of those moves look better too.

And at the end of the practice match, the scoreboard showing a very frustrating seventeen point lead in Kaijou’s favor, Kise smirks at him, gorgeous and unruffled. “That’s not good enough to challenge us.”

It’s Taiga’s first time meeting a miracle, and he already understands that the aforementioned _us_ doesn’t mean Kaijou.

And it pisses him off.

Living miracles or not, he’s going to beat those arrogant assholes.

* * *

“And then he used the same dunk as me!” Taiga complains later, trying to work through all the nasty emotion boiling inside him. Maybe it was just a practice game, but dammit, he hated losing. Especially losing like that.

Kuroko hums noncommittally, taking a shot on the basket and watching dispassionately as the ball bounced off the rim. They’d finally got around to introducing themselves after they ran into each other in Maji Burger for the first time and realized that the acquaintanceship they were avoiding was pretty much inevitable.

“I heard they were strong, but shit, that was totally fucking unbelievable!”

Kuroko isn’t the kind of guy to say much, so most nights it’s just Taiga grumbling at him and working through all the shitty parts of his day. Taiga doesn’t even know what school Kuroko goes to, but Kuroko could probably recite all his upperclassmen by name and list all his least favorite classes (all of them).

“May I ask what exactly Kagami-kun was expecting?” When Kuroko does talk, though, Taiga has learnt to listen.

“I–” Taiga begins, then cuts himself off, ruminating a little as he takes his own shot. The ball sinks into the basket neatly, but he barely notices. For a guy that only talks in dull, polite monotone, Kuroko knows how to say some hard hitting shit. “I dunno.”

“But you expected to win?”

“Yeah.” And that, maybe, was Taiga’s problem. He’d been excited by the prospect of five super strong players, a challenge, but somehow he hadn’t considered that he may not actually be a challenge to them.

He needs to be better prepared than that. If he is going to take on monsters, he has to be ready for monsters.

* * *

Interhigh doesn’t go so great for Seirin, even though Taiga and the others are throwing everything they have at their opponents, even though they haven’t slacked off for even a moment. Somehow, _somehow_, and it’s a very near thing, they manage to survive the match against Seihou.

And then they meet Shutoku.

Midorima isn’t what Taiga was quite expecting. He’s got the same damn arrogant air of Kise, but a sort of neurotic seriousness that makes it pretty much a moot point. Despite how high his head is up his own ass, Midorima takes his opponents seriously and works hard on the court.

And his three pointers are fucking unreal. Taiga takes too much satisfaction in slapping a couple of them down, but it’s not enough in the end.

Somehow, nothing is ever enough.

After the match and ensuing debrief with the team, Taiga retreats to the familiar court even though he’s exhausted.

He’s disappointed to find that, no, the court really is empty and he’s not just overlooking the neighborhood ghost. Part of him wants to just go home and sulk, but for some reason he stays and waits.

Kuroko doesn’t come until much later, wearing the sweatpants and jacket of a team Taiga doesn’t know. Taiga didn’t know Kuroko even played for his school’s team, but he doesn’t comment.

The uniform is a dull red. Taiga can’t decide if he likes the color on Kuroko or not, then catches himself and promptly erases the thought from his mind entirely.

“We lost to Shutoku.” Taiga says in lieu of greeting, because Kuroko knows how these things go by now and yet still keeps coming.

For a moment, they just stand in silence, the game still playing over and over in Taiga’s mind. Kuroko stares at him, maybe questioningly. Like he’s puzzled.

“I’m not supposed to practice.” Taiga confesses under the pressure of that gaze, “I overworked my legs in the game, or something.”

“If I could have jumped just a few more times…” Beyond his own voice, the world is frustratingly quiet. Taiga feels stripped bare, burned clean, confessing his sins. “We could have won.”

Silence. Then, surprisingly, there’s a response. “I don’t think that’s the whole solution.” Kuroko says, bringing the ball back to Taiga. “If you try to do everything yourself, you’ll overwork yourself in every game.”

Taiga thinks about those words for a long time. They seem important, somehow. He knows he has to jump higher, faster, more, to win. But his seniors are reliable too, in their own ways.

That matters just as much, he thinks, as Kuroko keeps bringing the ball back to his hands for the next hour, so he doesn’t once need to get it himself.

* * *

They don’t get into the Interhigh, but they watch.

Kise takes on another damn miracle, an imposing, tall player with deep blue hair and the air of an apex predator.

And if Taiga thought Kise was unfair, Aomine is another kind of beast entirely. No high schooler should be able to play like that. The Generation of Miracles' power forward is nothing short of terrifyingly unstoppable on the court, cutting through his opponents like they don’t exist at all, and Taiga doesn’t think he’s seen anyone ever move that fast.

Kise puts up a damn good fight, is nothing short of amazing in his own right, but he loses. Badly.

And in that moment, Taiga realizes just how overwhelmingly huge the mountain he’s sworn to climb is. He walks away from Interhigh feeling like he’s jumping for the stars, even if none of the Miracles ended up playing in the rest of the games: all patiently lined up on their respective teams’ benches, waiting for something.

Taiga doesn’t know what–who?–they were waiting for.

* * *

Kiyoshi comes back, and he’s awesome and annoying and badass and it’s like having an older brother again. Taiga works harder than he ever thought possible, because he wants to win with Seirin. Wants to jump over that mountain and touch the heavens, and wants to take his seniors with him.

There’s a streetball tournament the other first years want to go to, but there’s only four of them. On a whim, Taiga tells them he knows a guy without really thinking, and then immediately regrets it.

After all, Kuroko makes sucking at basketball into a damn art.

But that evening, he asks Kuroko to come in the morning anyway, because he’s got no better ideas.

Kuroko makes a dubious face at him, which for Kuroko means that his eyebrows are just a little more pinched together than normal.

“Seriously, wanna come or not?”

Kuroko deliberates quietly. Then, he looks at Taiga a little differently than the usual and says, “I’d like that very much.”

* * *

The other guys are very, very surprised by Kuroko seemingly appearing out of thin air by Taiga’s side, and somehow it’s a relief. His nights with Kuroko always seem so alienated from everything else in his life that sometimes he wondered if the boy at the courts wasn’t just some imaginary friend he came up with.

Kiyoshi is there, for some reason. He takes to Kuroko immediately, which is unsurprising. Kuroko’s insubstantial air and soft, almost lost expression (just the natural fall of his face, apparently. Kuroko was too direct and determined a person to be ever called lost) tended to awaken the protective instinct within people.

They blast through a couple teams in the tournament with ease. Between him and Kiyoshi, most already can’t keep up. But afterwards, Taiga can’t really remember Kuroko being on the court, and there’s something disconcerting about that, because he feels like he’s missing something.

And then, Seihou’s street team loses to a familiar face, and it’s like someone dumped ice water over his head.

Tatsuya—honest to God, _Tatsuya, holy shit—_is the same as ever, but the tension of their last meeting still hangs in the air. He talks it through with Kuroko because that’s just what he’s in the habit of doing at this point: spilling all the nasty feelings and memories out at Kuroko’s feet and waiting for the verdict.

Tatsuya looks at Kuroko funny, and then asks if they go to the same school. Somehow, the answer, _no_, seems to disappoint him.

They are all geared up to play, when an impossible giant wanders onto the court and starts to complain to Tatsuya.

Murasakibara is his name, and he’s got long, disheveled hair in a shocking shade of purple. Taiga knows the drill by now and knows to recognize a Miracle when he sees one.

(Wait, somehow that thought bothers him. It’s like he’s missing something again—)

Taiga gets into a bit of a goading match with the guy, because he’s not missing an opportunity to see what a Miracle can do, and somehow ends up saying something like “I’m gonna beat all five of you!”

Murasakibara makes a face, scowling harder than ever before. “Hot-headed guys are such a pain. You can’t even get the number right.”

And, honestly, Taiga doesn’t know what to say to that.

“What Atsushi means, Taiga, is that there’s six miracles.” Tatsuya explains like they’re still kids and Taiga doesn’t know shit, “Right, Atsushi?”

“It’s not nice to exclude Kuro-chin.” Murasakibara mutters, and then it starts to rain buckets.

It’s only once they’ve all ran to cover that Taiga realizes that Kuroko disappeared somewhere along the line. Or at least, Taiga can’t remember him being there after Murasakibara stepped on the court.

“Where’s Kuroko?” He asks, glaring around the crowd, and the jerks when something jabs into his back.

“I am right here.”

Of course he is. Why would Kuroko suddenly disappear like that, anyway?

_Kuro-chin_, Taiga will only remember later, and then he thinks about what he knows about the Miracles. There’s Kise, the copy cat small forward, Midorima, the paranoid shooting guard, Aomine, the intimidating power forward, Murasakibara, the apparently childish center, and Akashi, the point guard.

Yet, Tatsuya and Murasakibara suggested there were six, and Taiga had to assume that Murasakibara could count.

Plus, someone with _kuro_ in their name fit the whole stupid color theme.

* * *

He asks the others about it at the next practice.

“There was a strange rumor, during the height of Teiko’s dominating years,” Coach explains, “about a sixth player that specializes in passing.”

“Just a rumor?” Taiga asks, confused. From what he knew, the miracles got a lot of media attention, so that seems odd even to him.

“There’s almost no record or information about such a player though. People called him the phantom sixth man. That is, if he really existed at all.”

It fit with what Murasakibara said and implied.

But jeez, there just had to be _another _one.

* * *

“Seriously, there’s apparently another one. If you can believe it.”

Kuroko gives him a weird look. “What is Kagami-kun talking about?”

“_Apparently,_” And Taiga puts heavy emphasis on that, “there’s six members of the Generation of Miracles. Someone called the phantom sixth, or something. I mean, every time I think these guys can’t get any more bizarre.”

That’s when Taiga looks at Kuroko, _kuroko_, and at his cyan hair and eyes, and thinks, _nah, that can’t be right._

Kuroko’s probably the best basketball therapist on the planet, and maybe even Taiga’s best friend, but he’s just not that good a player.

* * *

There was time when Tatsuya was pretty much the most important person in Taiga’s life. He didn’t have that many other good friends, his parents weren’t really around that much, and Alex was Alex.

Since, well, _that_, he’s tried to not think about Tatsuya as much as possible. It was easier to focus on the near impossible task of taking down the Miracles, on working hard with his team right alongside him, on long, relaxing evenings with Kuroko.

In fact, Kuroko in general makes things easier. It’s easier to just live and exist when he knows that he can go back to Kuroko and tell him everything. Problems didn’t seem that bad when he had someone to talk them through with.

Well, it wasn’t just that.

He was more…himself, with Kuroko. Their friendship was one of no expectations, of no strings. There was no pressure to spend their time together having fun, or being friendly, or being good. They could just exist in each other’s space as themselves and that was enough. They could argue, they could fight, and yet they always ended up back in that same place.

Taiga had never had someone he’d call a companion before, but well, if the shoe fits. It didn’t matter what happened in school or basketball, whether he failed or lost or didn’t make it, because things with Kuroko wouldn’t change.

Taiga had never had the clearest vision of a future, but it seemed obvious that him and Kuroko would just keep on doing this forever.

So of course, that’s when reality came crashing back in the form of the Miracles.

Everything always came back to the fucking Miracles.

* * *

It happens like this: Taiga arrives at their court like usual, only to find something distinctly wrong.

Namely, someone else is there, and Kuroko doesn’t seem happy about it.

Actually, Kuroko looks downright agitated. Maybe somebody else wouldn’t be able to tell, but Taiga learnt how to read Kuroko’s minuscule micro-expressions out of self-defense ages ago.

The stranger is tall and broad shouldered, looming over Kuroko, and they seem to be arguing, though Taiga couldn’t hear what is being said. Even so, seeing the usually unflappable and calm Kuroko looking so uncomfortable and distressed immediately makes Taiga’s every protective instinct roar to life.

Without much more thought than that, he throws himself right in with a sharp, “This guy giving you trouble, Kuroko?” Growing up on the streets of LA as an Asian kid trying to play basketball had given Taiga certain skills in sticking up for himself. But it didn’t prepare him for when the stranger turns to face him with a scowl and Taiga recognizes the sheen of blue in the guy’s cropped hair.

Aomine _fucking_ Daiki.

What the fuck is he doing here?

Kuroko is staring at Taiga with wide eyes, looking surprised and…almost guilty.

But Taiga is still reeling from the fact that _Aomine i_s right there and snarling at him to think about that. “Who the hell are you?” 

“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko says, and if his voice shakes a little he covered it well, “this is my friend, Kagami-kun. Kagami-kun, this is my former classmate, Aomine-kun.”

“Classmate, huh?” Aomine snorts. There is something gruff and mean in his voice. “Is that what we’re calling it these days.”

Kuroko–he doesn’t quite flinch, but it is a close thing. And it makes Taiga mad.

“You got a problem, man?” He snarls before he can stop himself. Taiga doesn’t really understand the insinuation behind those words but he doesn’t like what they did to Kuroko’s expression anyway.

Now, if someone had told Taiga that morning that this evening he’d be staring down fucking Aomine Daiki over Kuroko, of all the ridiculous situations to happen, he would have laughed.

But it’s really happening. 


End file.
